For those who knew Susan O’Malley, the news a week ago Wednesday was as dreadful as it gets. Pregnant with twin girls, O’Malley collapsed into unconsciousness and died a week before she was due to deliver. Though doctors did an emergency C-section, the babies died with her.

All that was virtually unfathomable. But the 38-year-old O’Malley, a San Jose native and Berkeley resident, was far more than a loyal friend and a ready mother: She was a well-known Bay Area artist and curator who inspired people by the force of her personality.

In the week-and-a-half since her death, her friends and acquaintances have poured out their aching remembrances online of a woman they describe as genuine, funny and loyal.

“She wasn’t afraid to be seen as silly or earnest,” said her best friend, Christina Amini. “She wasn’t afraid to embarrass herself or put her whole heart out there. She was very funny, but honest.”

In one of her projects, she stopped people on the street and asked them if they wanted a “pep talk.” The talk, transcribed by an O’Malley friend, would end with a round of applause for the person.

A Willow Glen native who grew up the fourth of six kids in a family that teemed with vitality — the kids played soccer and danced Irish dances — O’Malley graduated from St. Christopher’s School, Presentation High School and Stanford University.

Even then, she was defying the expected with sharp, funny projects: In her senior year at Stanford, she and her friends produced a video of a gay, lactose-intolerant young man revealing his secrets to his dairy-conscious mother. The mother, naturally, worried about his lack of milk.

Sense of place

O’Malley, who served as an artist-in-residence at Montalvo Arts Center and worked more recently out of a studio in Berkeley, preserved a keen sense of place: In a 2004 show at the ICA, she exhibited artifacts uncovered from San Jose’s downtown Chinatown, the site of the Fairmont Hotel.

“We’re kind of obsessed with moving forward and what’s ahead, and yet there are literally stories underneath our feet that we don’t even know about,” she said then.

She often created art — simple messages of text in multiple colors — designed to deliver what she called “pep talks” to the community.

In one project, “Advice from my 80-year-old Self,” O’Malley asked people on Berkeley’s San Pablo Avenue what advice their 80-year-old selves would give them. “I think it’s easy to forget how wise we can be,” she said in explanation.

The result was a series of posters like “You already know what you need,” or “It’s not a dumb idea.”

O’Malley and her daughters, Lucy and Reyna, are survived by her husband, Tim Caro-Bruce. The family said the precise cause of her death is still undetermined.

A memorial for O’Malley will be held 11 a.m. Monday at the Montalvo Arts Center, 15400 Montalvo Road, Saratoga. After the memorial, the group will embark on “A Healing Walk,” an installation by O’Malley in the woods. For more, go to morebeautifulthanyoucouldeverimagine.com.